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Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

heaps.io

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Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#41

Post by Buttons840 »

Hemospectrum wrote: post #5
mftb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first glance it looks pretty nice. I wonder why it hasn't gotten more attention? Or did I just miss it?

The whole Haxe ecosystem flies under most people's radar, partly because it evolved from what was once the Flash ecosystem. It never really qualified for the kind of "NEW SHINY THING" announcement that creates hype elsewhere. A lot of people who have written loads of games are peripherally aware of it but have never actually gotten hands-on with it.

I've said before, I about fell out of my chair the first time I looked at the games created with Heaps: Dead Cells and a few other top tier indie games I had been looking at. Still haven't gotten around to learning Haxe though, hopefully soon.

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#42

Post by tkp »

ergo14 wrote: post #9
mftb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first glance it looks pretty nice. I wonder why it hasn't gotten more attention? Or did I just miss it?

I really love what Nicolas is doing. But it kinda feels like whole Haxe ecosystem driving force is this one guy.

The feeling is understandable and it could be worrying, but since some years Nicolas seems to be focusing on Shiro games and game dev tooling (heaps, hide). The compiler is developed by the Haxe Foundation and the ecosystem by the community which is not that big but has quite a few talents.

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#43

Post by larsiusprime »

logo4poop wrote: post #40

If you are new to the Haxe or game development world I would advise against Heaps as the documentation is pretty bare bones. Haxeflixel [0] is one that is prominently recommended for good reason. Heaps is still great regardless and I have used it for a few private projects. [0] https://haxeflixel.com/

As a longtime Haxe gamedev:

- Heaps is powerful and used by two of biggest and most successful Haxe gamedev companies (Shiro Games, Motion Twin, and I guess the Dead Cells spinoff company is a third now)

- HaxeFlixel is friendly and well-documented and used by some smaller but still successful gamedev companies, and is much more popular in the indie and game jam scene (also HaxeFlixel is 2D-only, Heaps is 2D and 3D)

- There's other noteworthy engines, Kha for instance. Also proletariat (Spellbreak) uses an Unreal engine integration with Haxe.

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#46

Post by throwaway82652 »

nine_k wrote: post #36
throwaway82652 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is missing in HTML5? You have WASM and websockets and the WebGL canvas built into every browser now, that seems to replicate just about everything Flash was known for doing? And just to clarify, I mean actually using the same old Flash development tools (apparently it's called Adobe Animate now?) Or is the issue that the export-to-HTML5 functionality in those tools is just not fully done yet?

Isn't the scene isn't there any more, or is it? Is Adobe Animate free (or easy to crack) so that an interested kid would just start with it and some tutorial, and could make something moderately cool in an afternoon?

I don't know, I was asking you!

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#49

Post by tsujp »

Under the title "2D and 3D accelerated graphics" on the linked website it shows gameplay for Darksburg (top-left) and Northgard (both on the middle row). I've played both of these games for a decent amount of time (~150 hours between both) and can attest to how fun I found them. Darksburg suffers from lack of content but as functional games (no bugs etc) it was a pleasant experience.

So it appears Shiro Games use it!

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#50

Post by postalrat »

mftb wrote: post #3
nullfish wrote: post #2

I've written a couple side project games in Heaps and I'm a big fan. If you're familiar with Pixi.js, Heaps and it's language, Haxe, will feel very similar. Haxe is a pretty cool language, it's similar to TypeScript but compiles to native binaries for almost all major game consoles. Heaps was apparently the framework behind Dead Cells if that says anything about the level of polish you can accomplish with this set of…

At first glance it looks pretty nice. I wonder why it hasn't gotten more attention? Or did I just miss it?

I think it's a victim of godot's popularity.
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